‘However, being a gentleman of some standing from the British Isles my father was accepted more than others,’ my mother told me.
Zita, my mother’s eldest sister, who my mother told me was a true beauty with straight auburn hair and luminous dark brown eyes, was born in Alipore, a very ‘up-social’ suburb of Calcutta. This was before my grandparents moved to Ballygunge and then Barrackpore, where they had a spacious bungalow with a luxuriant tropical garden rambling down to the River Hooghly (made famous by Rumer Godden’s book, The River, and the subsequent film). In 1930, Zita became engaged to Phillip Burch, a dashing officer with the Duke of Cornwall’s light infantry whom she’d met when he was recuperating with a broken ankle and staying with her parents. On a visit back to England before her wedding, Zita duly organised for my mother to sail to India to join their parents. So at just seventeen in July, 1930 my mother set forth on the six-week voyage in the charge of the captain.
‘There was a canvas swimming pool on board the ship,’ she told me. ‘We used to play deck quoits and in the evening we changed for dinner. Most of the women had dozens of evening dresses. I had just two, both fairly plain. After dinner, there was dancing. I loved it all.’ She gave a small smile. ‘Straight out of boarding school, I was somewhat naive and innocent; however, the doctor and purser took me under their wing. For it was a well-known fact that the chief officer had an eye for the women, particularly young ones.’ She laughed. ‘If I was unlucky enough to be holed up in a cupboard with him, whilst playing the popular game Sardines, the purser would be close at hand. He even took me ashore when he went to do the ship’s banking at the ports we passed through, making sure the chief officer could not harass me in his absence.’ She stopped talking for a moment and I could see a twinkle in her beautiful hazel eyes. ‘He did a good job, for I landed in India as innocent and uninstructed in the ways of the world as I was when I walked out the doors of Tunbridge Wells for the last time.’
Some months later the purser and doctor arrived at Barrackpore and took her to a memorable dinner at the famous restaurant, Firpos in Chowingree, where the popular Angelo Firpo, renowned for his scrumptious dishes, reigned supreme over this popular establishment situated next door to the Oberoi Grand Hotel. When not eating at Firpos, the genteel were often found at Pelitis, owned by the celebrated, Frederico Pelitis (who’d tutored Angelo Firpo in the fine art of cooking), where a quick lunch cost one pound and fifty pence. In Firpos the average bill was about two pound fifty. Both sound horrendously expensive for the day; however, my mother assures me Firpos was worth every penny. Sadly it closed down in the 1960s, so I’m unlikely to ever put it to the test.
When the boat from England arrived at Calcutta my mother’s parents met her at the docks. Having not seen her for four years they found it difficult to recognise their daughter. She had now grown into a tall and beautiful young woman.
‘It was like strangers meeting for the first time and that gap was never really closed,’ she told me sadly, holding a photograph of her debonair father in her hands.
Later, after a fine welcoming lunch in town, their driver drove the family home to Barrackpore, sixteen miles from Calcutta.
‘I remember being so taken with it all, the women in bright saris, the heady aromas, the rickshaws everywhere, and cows sitting in the middle of the roads. Even the poor beggars had a certain charm. It was total chaos. But I just adored it.
‘My parents’ bungalow was amidst a magical garden of tropical flowers and native bushes bursting with vibrant colours,’ my mother reminisced. ‘There were violets, hopheads, balerias, frangipani, jasmine vines, orchids, clematis, and the wonderful purple and pink pride of India trees. I immediately fell in love with India and its people (the natives not the Brits), from the moment I was there.’
My mother related many tales about her social life in India, visiting clubs, especially the Saturday Club (the Slap) for tennis, horse riding, swimming, badminton and bridge, high teas and grand balls. It was the heady days of the Raj. My vivacious grandmother would have been a source of delight to the young officers from the barracks (although my mother was sometimes embarrassed by her extraversion) as she entertained them on piano with hits of the day.
My mother adored her friend, Indira, the Maharani of Cooch Behar, a glamorous and wealthy widow, who was refused entry to the Saturday Club but would hold lavish parties of her own for which she was famous.
Tragically, after my mother had a memorable holiday on a houseboat in Shrinigar with Zita and Phillip, things changed for the worse.
‘In 1932 my father lost all his money and my parents and I returned to England, leaving Zita and Phillip in Meerut,’ she told me. ‘When we arrived at Dover after the long six-week voyage, we were met with the devastating news of Phillip’s sudden death from rabies as a result of a bite from his beloved dog.’
It was a tragic loss of a fine man, whom my mother always mourned. She told me, my Rob, as a young army officer, always reminded her of Phillip.
My mother stayed in England during this period, where she kept the wolf from the door by setting her hand to all sorts of jobs. She, like many of her convent-educated contemporaries, was untrained for any position of great help in a time like this, although she’d passed her Matric with flying colours. She was supposedly destined for a ‘good marriage’ in India, until things fell apart. The fishing fleet, as it was described, was when young women came to India to visit their relations and hopefully find a dashing beau at the same time.
Undaunted, my mother first found a job working in the ski resort of Arosa in the district of Plessur belonging to the canton of Graubunden in Switzerland, looking after a young girl called Maria, where she stayed for six months, often competing in snow races, both on skis and on horses. When back in England, she found employment as a telephonist, (a great help later in our initial time in Australia). She also secured work in the Strand Palace Hotel and the Savoy, more on her wits than any training. She had no shorthand and typing, which of course was what was required in those days. Her charm and good looks got her by and even the Aga Khan was rather taken by her and her Irish friend, Moira, taking them out on the town on more than one occasion when he stayed at the Savoy.
‘He was a very charming man,’ she told me, but took it no further than that, despite my probing. ‘And I enjoyed my time at the Savoy, even though I only earned thirty shillings a week, fifteen of which went on board. Moira was great fun and we often went out dancing. I remember walking back to the Savoy the week before Christmas and seeing Wallis Simpson driving by. Standing on the side of the road, we joined a group who started singing and shouting out: Hark the Herald Angels sing, Wallis Simpson stole our King. She really was very unpopular.’
This is also the period when my mother became engaged to Tony Marks, whose family ran a country hotel in Farnborough, Hampshire. This as we know didn’t work out, to the great satisfaction of my father.
‘Sadly,’ she said, ‘Tony was killed in an air raid in London during the Second World War.’ She paused and took a sip from her sherry glass. ‘After some time back in Ireland, when things weren’t going quite as they should have been within the marriage, both financially and otherwise, my mother returned to India to take up a position as housekeeper with the Nizam of Hyderabad. She’d rather courageously answered an advertisement the Nizam’s household had placed in a London newspaper. She stayed in this position for two years sending money home to my father each month. He was now also living in Clonmoylan, helping Aunt Winnie with the farm.’ She smiled. ‘It appeared to be a platonic relationship. Eventually my father went to Scotland and managed the estates of a Mrs Robertson, a mysterious lady, who later became his companion. I received a letter from my father just before we left for Australia in 1954,’ she continued, ‘wishing me good luck. As travelling between Ireland and Great Britain was prohibited during the war and finances were so bad after the war it was many years since I’d seen him. And of course once we left for Australia I was sadly never to
see him again.’
Granny Mac eventually left India and returned to Ireland to live on her own, whilst my grandfather remained with Mrs Robertson until his death in 1960 at age eighty-eight. On her death, a number of years later, when we were trying hard to make ends meet in Australia, Mrs Robertson kindly bequeathed my mother some much-needed money (twelve thousand pounds). It was quite unexpected, as my mother was not sure that Mrs Robertson even knew where we were all living at the time. It was money we could well do with; hence we were all eternally grateful to the generous, if mysterious, Aisla Robertson.
My mother assures me she has no idea where she spent the years from when she was two until four and started at Tunbridge Wells.
When there, my mother sat with the nuns in their pews and chewed on their rosary beads.
‘It was a lovely country setting,’ she told me, ‘with beautiful gardens, a stone fountain, which I fell into at aged four, and acres of rolling fields and woods.’
In later years, after the First World War, which saw them take shelter from Zeppelin raids down in the cellar, she spent one lot of school holidays with Brigid O’Malley and her father, who had been presumed killed in action during the War, only to arrive back to tragically find his wife was married to another. A situation no doubt repeated across the country time and time again. Heartbroken, he took his daughter and my mother to Parknasilla, a magnificent hotel on the Ring of Kerry in Ireland for a few weeks’ holiday, where seventy-five years later she asked me to take her again. Although unable to walk the glorious grounds rolling down to Kenmare Bay, she sat by the window in the drawing room where we partook of high tea. Later we dressed for cocktails before being escorted to our places in the plush dining room overlooking the grounds, which rolled down to the bay where she’d sat all those years before.
Over the years, Parknasilla has been a retreat for many well-known identities from around the world, including the past Taoiseach, Berty Ahern, who holidays there each summer.
In 1954, as my parents tossed the big move to Australia around, it was not just my father’s mother we would be leaving behind. It was also Granny Mac. So all in all it was a huge decision to up stakes and leave.
‘I suppose as I’d spent so much of my life without my parents that I didn’t think it odd at the time,’ my mother told me, when I asked if she and my father hadn’t felt guilty about leaving both of my grandmothers behind in Ireland. ‘Besides, I thought it wouldn’t be long before we could come back to visit.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Mind you, it was a lot longer than I thought.’
Chapter 9
Leaving for Down Under
I remember my father announcing to us one evening, as we gathered around the roaring fire in the drawing room of Clonmoylan, that he had successfully negotiated with the gentleman from the Dublin Horse Show. He now had a Manager’s job waiting for him in New South Wales on the gentleman’s large coastal sheep property. He was to sail out first on the P & O cruise liner, the Orcades. My mother and the rest of us would follow a couple of months later on the Oronsay. This would give my father a chance to settle into his new job and find us a house to live in, as accommodation in Australia at the time was as scarce as hens’ teeth.
It didn’t quite work out like this. To a seven year old our proposed move to the other end of the world was a great adventure. I wasn’t too worried about the details. We’d seen some enticing brochures of various countries. Australia looked by far the most colourful and exciting – with its endless white sandy beaches, jumping kangaroos, cute koala bears, scraggly gumtrees and wonderful cornflower blue skies. What’s more, the boat trip sounded out of this world. Much to my delight, I noticed that the Oronsay even had a swimming pool.
‘It’s always hot in Australia. And you can ride your horses to school and tie them up under a gumtree,’ my mother told us with a knowing smile, as we stared at her in awe.
Looking out of the window, at the rain pelting down, and with Early Mist, Billy Boy and Merrylegs sheltering under a sodden tree, this move was starting to sound like heaven on a stick.
‘Yet,’ my mother told me, ‘I noticed the older ones, Dibs and Gill particularly, although excited, were worried. No doubt they were concerned about what they’d be leaving behind in Ireland to start a new life in a strange country, for they both had made good friends at Mount Anville and the thought of starting all over again in a new school, let alone a new country, was daunting.’
Even Eugene was now settled into Blackrock College with a tight group of friends. However, all I could think about was how I would be able to ride my own horse to school in the bright Australian sunlight and swim in the warm surf.
‘I know I was naïve,’ my mother said, ‘yet somehow I felt the move would solve our financial problems. For there was no way we could continue to send Dibs, Gill and Eugene to boarding school. And then of course there was you and Viv to think of later. Even keeping the food on your plates was becoming harder and harder as our debts grew each month! We could possibly have sold Clonmoylan and moved somewhere else, but Ireland was in such a depression that Australia looked like a very attractive cloud with a wonderful silver lining.’
My father left for Australia on 17th February, 1954. With mixed feelings, we saw him off at the North Wall in Dublin for his crossing to Liverpool. From there he was to continue by train to London, where he would board the P&O liner, the Orcades. We were to follow in six weeks. I can hardly imagine how my mother felt at this stage, seeing her husband off to an unknown land on the other side of the world, leaving us all behind; while ahead for her was the daunting prospect of a long boat trip with five children ranging in age from seven to fifteen.
My father had to tie up the fraying ends of the existence we were about to discard before he left for Australia. In practical terms, this meant auctioning most of the furniture, much of it antiques, and other less select pieces, which had made the trip from Drominagh across the lake to Clonmoylan those years before. Most of our silver and crockery my father packed himself in large packing cases for the long journey to Australia. Some of the valuable Worcester china didn’t make it unscathed. Much was in pieces when it arrived, putting extra strain on my parents when it was unpacked later in Canberra. I think my mother finally forgave my father just before he died for this sloppy packing.
Clonmoylan was put on the market with a real estate agent in Limerick. Shortly a retired colonial doctor made us an offer, which my parents accepted. It was a sad decision, but having made it there was no looking back or time for regrets. My mother’s great saying was: ‘Having made your bed you must lie in it.’
This was certainly the case here.
Leaving Clonmoylan behind, we moved to a small brick bungalow in Putland Avenue, Bray, south of Dublin, to await our departure for Australia.
My donkey, Early Mist, was given a new home with a family in the village and I cried myself dry against his soft furry neck as I said goodbye. The dogs, Eugene’s Timmy, Gill’s Shadow and Viv’s cat, Bunty, went to friends. Merrylegs and Billy Boy were found homes and were sadly loaded up in horse floats and taken away, our pleas that we be allowed to take them having been callously dismissed by our parents.
My father said of the time we left Clonmoylan: ‘We said farewell to Clonmoylan, which had been our home for seven years; seven years of country life beside our beloved Shannon. Years which, although not entirely carefree for Toni and me, had been wonderfully so for the children during their early years.’
The seaside town of Bray, where we spent the few months waiting to leave for Australia, holds fond memories for me. I remember the long walks by the sea, the air ringing with the caw of seagulls and the fun of having other children close by. We’d never had neighbours as such, so the novelty of having playmates to horse around with, play hop-scotch or build sandcastles on the beach, never wore off. I loved the pounding waves on the shore and the tangy smell of seaweed.
One rainy morning, minus my two front teeth, I stood in the church wearing a brand new whi
te embroidered dress and veil made by my mother, with all the family (apart from my father) looking on proudly at my First Communion. I placed the small piece of shamrock I was given carefully in my First Holy Communion book, treasuring it for many years. It may not have been the first piece of shamrock to make the long trip to Australia, but it was one of the most beloved.
Chapter 10
On the High Seas
After arriving in Sydney my father was picked up by family friends, the Frosts, who’d migrated to Australia not long before. After a few weeks at their house in Morriset on Lake Macquarie, north of Newcastle in New South Wales, he set off on a mammoth 440-mile drive that would take him through dry dusty roads to Bobingah, near the small towns of Nimmitabel and Bombala at an altitude of 1070m on the high Monaro plains not far from the Victorian border and the Snowy Mountains.
He had met his new employer, Jim Baker, a stocky bloke, well turned out in moleskins and a large felt hat, at the Australia Hotel in the heart of Sydney as arranged. Together, they drove out of the hustle and bustle of Sydney and onto the gravelled two-lane Hume Highway between Sydney and Canberra.
‘Getting stuck behind a huge heavy transport with no way of passing made for a slow trip,’ he said.
The countryside appeared deserted – for most of the potholed road ran through sprawling sheep stations with the homesteads out of sight behind the barren hills. They drove through the country towns of Campden, Mittagong, Moss Vale, Goulburn and on through Canberra before continuing south to the town of Cooma, the headquarters of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority. At the time the largest engineering hydro scheme in the world was being built here, employing many new migrants from Europe. Taking twenty-five years to complete, it brought enormous benefit to all of Eastern Australia. Many a new migrant found the harsh conditions and hard slogging work unbearable. Tragically, an enormous number of lives were lost, quite often young and virile men, full of the hopes and dreams of a new life in a far better country than the one they’d left behind, struggling to cope with the aftermath of war. Sadly, what they found in their new land was sometimes harder to hack than what they’d fled from.
Can My Pony Come Too? Page 7